Category Archives: View

View 700 Sunday, November 13, 2011

We don’t do breaking news, but sometimes breaking news triggers stories we’ve been holding on to.

· The Foreign Policy Debate

· Assassination in Dubai

· Explosions in Iran

· Brazil sends in the Army and the Marines

The Foreign Policy Debate

Newt Gingrich is generally the smartest man in any room he happens to be in; he certainly was in the latest Republican debate. As usual he followed Reagan’s dictum: don’t trash fellow Republicans. Instead he was careful to say that anyone on that stage was infinitely preferable to Barrack Hussein Obama. He was also responsive and decisive on the questions, and showed what everyone knows, that he has kept up with world affairs. He has presided over balanced budgets, he understands the need for science and investment in long range technologies, and he was the only candidate to point out that the US is a maritime power and we are underfunding our Navy and we will face severe consequences from that. He looked Presidential, and he sounded well informed. He understands American conservatism and he is politically principled. Newt’s negatives are personal, not intellectual.

Romney came off well. As usual he looks Presidential. He is well informed, and he has no personal defects that I know of. He has principles. Many of his views are conservative.

CBS News says

And despite being widely seen as the frontrunner for the nomination, Romney didn’t take any serious blows from his rivals. (Gingrich notably declined to elaborate on his not-so-veiled criticism of Romney as little more than a competent manager who wouldn’t change Washington.) Romney’s only cause for concern: If he’s supposed to be the man to beat, why aren’t his rivals more eager to take him down?

As to why his rivals won’t do the hatchet job on Romney that CBS News and the rest of the media want done, I don’t suppose I need to make any comment beyond saying the Republicans are getting smart. Romney can certainly beat Obama in a general election. He is a competent manager, and is likely to take advice from smart people. The media hope that if he is elected he will ‘grow’ which to them means he’ll become a liberal seeking the adulation of the liberal media. They may be in for a surprise. My Mormon friends are not all conservative but they are all strong advocates of individual freedom coupled with community, not government, collective responsibility.

And he scored points with conservatives in responding to a question from debate co-host CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, who pointed out that al Qaeda recruiter and U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by U.S. forces without trial, was not convicted in court. You don’t get such privileges if you are at war with the United States, Gingrich said.

Herman Cain held his own. He is not a foreign policy expert, and he made it pretty clear that he doesn’t intend to be one, just as he doesn’t intend to be a military expert. He said clearly that in such matters he would call in a number of experts and have each present his views, then as commander in chief he would choose one. That’s what most managers have to do – few CEO’s are experts at everything that goes on in their companies. That’s what the best past presidents of the US have done. The alternative is to insist on some kind of collective recommendation so that the CINC is not bothered with the need to make tough choices. Cain doesn’t look to be afraid of tough choices, but he is also aware that there are many aspects to foreign policy and military policy that he doesn’t know a lot about. That sounds pretty good to me. He’s aware that he’s not a military or diplomatic genius.

Governor Perry held his own. He is clearly not all that comfortable in debates, but then few Presidents have engaged in debates while in office. You have to be good at debate to get the office, but the President doesn’t go out on the floor of the House or Senate and engage in debate, nor do we hold debates among heads of state. We know Perry can make good speeches. He is apparently dynamite at charming a small group, which is a skill that Presidents do need and need badly. The radio is reporting the Perry actually won the poll of those watching the debate. Interesting.

Ron Paul remains Ron Paul. He is a strict constitutionalist. His views on what we should and should not do in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are based on his rejection of the notion that those are legal wars: they were not declared by Congress. Ron Paul’s view of War is pretty close to that of the Framers, as is his view of the role of the States in domestic matters. That’s pretty close to my views on the subject as well. I have more than once pointed out that the Constitution says nothing about education, so why is the federal government at all involved in it? Indeed the Constitution makes the Congress the absolute sovereign of the District of Columbia: if they know how to educate kids, let them show the country how to do it in the place where they are in charge. Instead the federal government including the judiciary wants to run the schools in Kansas City, with the usual disastrous results. But I digress. My bottom line: I think the country would be a lot better off after four or eight years of Ron Paul as President even as I would be prepared to be critical about some of his foreign policy views: but Constitutional Republic is a far far better scenario than incompetent empire, which is what we’ve been trying. I am glad to see Ron Paul in the debates, but I confess that I don’t think he is a serious candidate. He can say what he wants to say because he isn’t going to win. I’d like to see him in the Senate when this is all over. Ah well.

Michelle Bachman remains a serious candidate. She was well informed, and a great deal more charismatic than she was in the early debates. Huntsman is a foreign policy expert, and it shows. He’d make a good Secretary of State, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him as grand duke of Foggy Bottom in 2013. Like Huntsman and Bachman, Santorum came out about where he went in, not losing but not gaining much. As Newt keeps saying, anyone on that stage would be far better for America than the present occupant of the White House; I saw nothing to make me doubt that.

Assassination in Dubai

They’re not calling it an assassination yet, but it sure looks like one. The son of an important Iranian official has been found dead in a Dubai hotel. It’s all remarkably similar to what happened to a Hamas official not all that long ago. It’s possible that this wasn’t a strike by Mossad, but I sure wouldn’t bet much money on it.

Note that this happens as there is news of explosions in Iran at bases connected with the Iranian nuclear program. There’s even video. All this happens as the Republican candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, agree that they would use any means necessary including military strikes and joint covert actions with Israel to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

As to what’s going on:

Iran has long had a policy of providing strong incentives – positive and negative – to its smartest kids to study nuclear engineering and go into the Iranian nuclear program. It has long been thought that one way to make sure there is no nuclear program is make sure there aren’t any really bright nuclear engineers.

This rather drastic policy has been applied in the past, and neither Syria nor Iraq ever got nuclear weapons. Note that hostility toward Iran having nuclear weapons is universal in the Arab world with the single exception of Syria. The obvious author of the Iranian explosions and the death of the smart young man in a Dubai hotel is Mossad, but Israel is not the only country happy with these recent events, nor is Mossad the only intelligence agency capable of using these techniques. Welcome to the shadow world.

Brazil Sends in the Marines

Most Americans have never seen a real slum. Brazil knows a lot about them, and periodicaly the government sends in the Army to tame them down a bit. That’s happening again. The headlines talk about police, but these operations involve armored personnel carriers, Brazilian Marines and other elite troops as well as police. The military maxim that if a job needs a platoon, send a regiment seems to be governing.

It isn’t the first time Brazil has used its army for the reconquest of generations-old slum areas. The results have been mixed. When you have an area that for many decades has had no police, garbage collection, building codes, street repaid, or any of the other services usually associated with even the lowest level of western city life, establishing some kind of rule of law is a very difficult proposition.

Brazil has a thriving economy and seems to have tamed much of its bureaucracy. It will be interesting to see this experiment in nation building. We can all wish them well, and there will be a thousand dissertation topics…

Those interested in Cain may find these sites worth a moment.

http://www.norcalblogs.com/gate/2011/11/5th-cain-accuser-was-involved-in-return-of-elian-gonzalez-to-cuba-now-works-for-obama-administration.php

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=47438

The Cain events are not over. All this is a bit of a distraction. The real question is what can be done about the economy, and that requires an agreement on just what is the point of government, and who owns what. Is the purpose of government to reduce the gap between richest and poorest? That certainly was not the intent of the Framers, some of whom might have thought of that as a good idea, but it wasn’t what the Constitution was intended to do. If it is the job of a government it would have to be a state government. Of course if any state adopted a really serious soak the rich program, the result would be wealth flight – as is happening with the flow of wealth and jobs from California to Texas (or California to almost anywhere, for that matter).

Whatever the merits and demerits of the Cain 9-9-9 plan (and there is much to debate about it), an excise tax does reach everyone. Those who spend more pay more in tax, but everyone has to pay something. When some pay no taxes at all, there is no incentive for them not to vote for higher taxes. If you have to pay the tax you vote for, you have some reason to think about raising that tax.

I have no great objection to reducing the disparity between richest and poorest, but I have a lot of objection to raising the government’s revenue. The more money government gets, the more it will spend on bunny inspectors, Walnuts as Drugs, and thousands of other such programs. Government spending will always rise to exceed income. Raising taxes just raises spending. If you want to reduce the disparity in incomes, first eliminate institutions government and private that are too big to fail. The result of that may surprise you. But that’s another essay.

Just to clarify the above: I would very much like to see laws and regulations that limit the sizes of organizations, including private fortunes. The problem is that doing that has side effects. I do subscribe to the principle that any organization that is too big to fail is to big. I subscribe even more to the elimination of institutions that take high risks, keeping the winnings while saddling the public with their losses. It seems to me that we can go a long way in that direction fairly rapidly.

I would start with the banks: instead of a Big Five or Big Six I would have a not-so-big fifty or sixty. One way to do that would be to go back to the separation of commercial and investment banks, with investment banks unable to guarantee any funds or receive any bailouts. We had such a structure until about 2000. We also need to stop using public money to drive up the costs of education and housing. All this is relatively simple, and I suspect that all the necessary measures would be approved by both the Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movements.

What we don’t need is to rob the rich in order to give the government more money to spend.

View 700 Friday, November 11, 2011

VETERAN’S DAY

I am taking the day off. Have a great day. There used to be parades. Perhaps in some places there still are.

View 700 Thursday, November 10, 2011

Happy Birthday, US Marines

Happy Birthday, Marines!

Semper Fidelis,

Couv

Cheap energy = prosperity! Drill here, DRILL NOW!

David Couvillon

Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; Chef de Hot Dog Excellance; Avoider of Yard Work

The Republican Candidate Debate in Rochester, Michigan, went well for the Republicans. All of them, including Governor’s Romney and Perry. Romney looked and acted both principled and presidential; looking presidential is not news, but he came across as quite principled; more so than the media likes. As to Perry, he had a momentary fit of absentmindedness as he tried to remember the names of the Departments of the government that he would eliminate the day after his inauguration: Commerce, Education, and – and he couldn’t remember. Gov. Romney suggested EPA, and for a moment Perry accepted that, then recalled that it’s an Agency, not a Department. Given another chance to name the Department he would eliminate, he once again had a lapse of memory. Eventually he realized, as everyone who has listened to his previous speeches already knew, that it was the Department of Energy.

If I, with my wretched memory, could recall that it was Energy, I assume that the other candidates, and all of the CNBC moderators, knew precisely which Department Gov. Perry had in mind, but apparently Gov. Romney didn’t when he prompted Gov. Perry with ‘EPA’. After all this was over I began to mull over what I would do had I been one of the candidates.

(Actually, given my history, there’s no real mystery had it been me: I’d have said, loudly, “Energy” because that’s what I have done for most of my life, including a rather unhappy time in high school in which I corrected a classmate’s answer by saying aloud ‘Osmosis’, winning me the not very affectionate nickname of “Osmosis” for weeks; but that’s another story. It’s also why I have never run for office, although I have been a successful campaign director for both a Mayor and a Congressman. But enough rambling about me.) I am still a bit curious: I can understand the CNBC ‘moderators’ leaving Governor Perry to twist in the wind while they hid their grins, but why no one on the stage, or for that matter in the audience, didn’t simply say ‘Energy’ and get the embarrassment over with escapes me. Perhaps Speaker Gingrich thought it would be impolite: Newt. like me, suffers from a tendency to correct other people’s mistakes and I note that he has been very careful not to interrupt or otherwise break the debate rules. Newt is almost inevitably the smartest guy in any room he is in, and he has to be careful not to appear to be an irritating know it all. I don’t know the others well enough even to speculate on why they didn’t simply end Governor Perry’s misery.

But when all is said and done, while the incident was embarrassing, it was hardly definitive. It doesn’t show Perry more or less qualified to be President. We know that Perry has been an effective and re-elected governor of a prosperous state. We know that candidates can be dependent on a teleprompter and get elected. We know that Perry’s lapse of memory was both temporary and unimportant. We all, or certainly I, can cheer for a man who will eliminate those three Departments. I have reservations about getting rid of Commerce, and I doubt that he can do that one; but certainly Education has to go!

Newt’s tirade against the moderators brought cheers.

The CNBC “moderators” apparently believed this was a debate between the candidates and the media, with the CNBC moderators being the representatives of the media. They made little effort to conceal their own views and their antagonism to the Republicans. They didn’t do quite so much in trying to set the Republicans at each other’s throats as they have in the past – some of that may be due to Newt’s popularity in addressing that in previous debates — but they clearly believed that this was to be a debate between themselves and the Republicans, and that they held the upper hand. One of them, Jim Cramer, came off like – well the word I want may be libelous. Let us say that he may more than once have taken leave of his senses? Rush Limbaugh wonders if he escaped from a zoo, and advocates using a tranquilizer dart. The others were no better. The permanent moderator Maria Bartiromov displayed her hostility to all the candidates – particularly to Cain of course — and was generally smarmy towards all of them. But then what do you expect from CNBC? I think last night was the first time I had watched that channel in months, and no moderator’s performance made me want to see more.

Bartirmorov tried to engage Newt in some kind of slanging match, and showed that she’s not up to that task.

More after lunch: but my conclusion from the debate is that all the candidates are alive and well, any one of them would be capable of beating Obama, and any one of the would be infinitely superior to the current president. If they can all cooperate – and last night it appeared they can – we can look forward to at least some recovery from the past few years. I came away much relieved.

Lunchtime now.

Perhaps it is time to take assessment of the Herman Cain situation. We still don’t know anything, but the matter won’t go away, and it should be resolved.

There are several related questions of importance.

First, of course, is the question of truth: what did Cain do? Did he do anything at all?

Second, is what he did relevant to being President of the United States?

Third, is what he did relevant to being the Republican Candidate for President of the United States.

The problem with the first question is that we can’t answer it because we don’t know what he is supposed to have done. We have one specification from Sharon Bialek, but few clues as to what Cain is supposed to have done regarding Kraushaar and the two anonymous accusers. We know that Kraushaar received a termination settlement on condition that she go away and never come back, but we also know that the termination payment was considerably less than the cost would have been had formal charges been filed, no matter what the outcome. Many corporations make settlements like that. The larger the corporation the more likely the incidents.

We have Donna Donella who says she is emphatically not a “fifth accuser” for she has nothing to accuse Cain of. He once asked her to arrange dinner in a public place in Cairo, and Ms. Donella has a “weird feeling” about all that, but she only came forward because all the others did. All the others being two in number, one with a specification and the other with a formal complaint that resulted in her termination with compensation. The media makes Ms. Donella “the fifth accuser” in her despite. The story is told in The Frisky as well as other places, with the headline that a Fifth Woman Accuses Cain of Sexual Harassment, when Donella explicitly says she is not making any such charge. She just had a spooky feeling.

Another on line magazine says “Donella joins accusers Sharon Bialek, Karen Kraushaar, and two unnamed others.”

We have Sharon Bialek who looks less credible as time goes on.

And Ann Coulter has found links to Axelrod, who managed to find charges of sexual misconduct against other Obama political opponents back in Illinois – and oddly enough, Sharon Bialek and Karen Kraushaar have far more Chicago connections than they do to Washington or to Cain. And Kraushaar may have  long standing connections to Democratic politics.

As to whether any of the charges have relevance to the presidency whether true or not, they do now: Cain has left us no choice in the matter. He hasn’t said that the stories we have heard so far are misinterpretations. He has said that what was charged in the Bialek specification just didn’t happen, and while he doesn’t know what specifications are alleged in the Kraushaar case, he didn’t do anything wrong.

As to whether this affects his candidacy, it certainly does. If he can show that this is all political chicanery originating with people close to the President of the United States directed against a black conservative candidate, and it’s all made up, it will greatly strengthen his candidacy, both for nominee and for President.  If one of his accusers can come up with a credible specification – an allegation of a specific act – that is sufficiently disturbing, it will destroy him, not because of the act itself – it’s pretty clear that we have heard the worst, which is an alleged clumsy and thoroughly unsuccessful offer of sexual attention to a non-employee – but because Cain has made it so. Either he is the man he appears to be, and whom most of those who know him claim he is, or he is not. Clinton never claimed to be anyone but Clinton. Cain aspires to a higher standard of character.

Whether he can prove it in the court of public opinion – the only place this will be tried – is not known. The Axelrod attack machine makes the Clinton attack machine look tame and reasonable. We can look for more and more of this as the campaign goes on. And the longer it goes on, the more it will come down to this: is Cain the man he says he is? Because I don’t have any doubt that Axelrod is the man we all believe him to be.

Electric cars come to the forefront. Few seem to have noticed that using an electric car inevitably increases the CO2 in the atmosphere. It has to because the energy cycle is never more than 50% efficient and generally is less so. That means that in order to generate the electricity to go into the car, it must first be generated by the burning of coal. The coal to Kilowatts cycle is less efficient than the gasoline to horsepower cycle. The Kilowatts to horsepower cycle is also inefficient. The result is that burning gasoline directly produces less CO2 than burning coal and transmitting that to be converted into potential energy in batteries which is then converted to horsepower.

Note that the electric care is less polluting than an internal combustion car – but only if you do not define CO2 as a pollutant. If you think CO2 pollutes the atmosphere, then electric car users are polluters. I could do the numbers for you, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader because I am running a bit late.

If you have not seen Ann Jolis “A French Lesson in Free Speech” it is well worth your attention. Between political correctness and Muslim terrorism the whole tradition of free speech including blasphemous speech is very much in danger, here and elsewhere.

A Wall Street Journal editorial tells us that there is a proposed Federal regulation that would save 12 children a year by regulating the cords on Venetian blinds in private homes. It would incidentally raise the price of the blinds, and the profits of the blinds makers. I cannot believe that the cost of the program will be less than $!2 million a year. I also cannot understand why this is the business of the federal government, or where in the Constitution it makes cords on Venetian blinds a federal matter. No wonder we’re broke and getting broker.

I hate Firefox. It is a horrid memory hog, and it can take a long time to readjust itself once it glitches. I like the extensions and ad-ons but I am about ready to try something else.

Roberta reminds me that it is probably time for the Department of Commerce to go. There was a time when it did some important things for the US, but it is now mostly a source of regulations which we don’t need and which ought to be left to the States. Of course that brings us to the matter of the Department of Labor.

The Federal Government does a lot of stuff that may need doing but which we can’t afford. Most of that has been done in the past by the states, and that is the way this Republic was conceived. Having 50 semi-sovereign states means competition in taxes, regulations, and much else. It also makes it much more likely that you get consent of the governed; if a state government becomes intolerable, you can go to another state (as many are moving to Texas…)

And of course there are federal items like this: http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/health-care/8294-walnuts-are-drugs-

Surely that is a matter best left to the states?

View 700 Wednesday, November 09, 2011

The Herman Cain story continues. After him will come Newt Gingrich. Tonight’s debate will be important. The reason for the increasing shrillness of the attacks is desperation: the liberal establishment has concluded that Obama is vulnerable, possibly even doomed, and of the Republican candidates only Romney appears to be someone they can work with, someone who can grow in office, who will reach across the aisle to continue liberal programs.

Note that Romney has nothing to do with the attacks on Cain. He’s just the guy the media consider to be the lesser of a number of evils. They can work with him.

As to Cain: The charges and specifications are still unclear, as is the number of accusers anonymous and identified. Are there four or five? Have more than two identified themselves? Why come forward now, 14 years after the incidents supposedly took place (about the time of the Clinton Lewinsky affair). If Cain is a serial harasser, why have there been no incidents in this millennium?

As of now the most serious charge is actual touching someone in what amounts to a spectacularly inept pass in a car parked or stopped on a District of Columbia street. The story makes it appear that Cain expected sexual gratification on the spot. The woman, not an employee but a job seeker, said no, and the incident ended without any actual sexual encounter. If the entire incident happened as Bialek describes, it is not sexual harassment, but it would be an assault and battery without injury. It happened 14 years ago, and no charges were ever filed.

No other charge alleges an assault. To the extent that anyone knows, they all involve “inappropriate gestures” at least one of which was “not of a sexual nature.” One or more might sustain a charge of ‘sexual harassment’ in that there was an employee relationship in some cases, but that would have to be a charge against his employer. At least one of the cases was formally reported to the employer and there was an investigation and settlement. The settlement involved termination of the employee and the details are not available, but none of the rumors involves any large amounts of money: the settlements are all far lower than would have been the costs if an actual suit had been filed, and there are many precedents for actions like that.

We do know that President Clinton made much larger settlements, and a great deal more than inappropriate offers or requests were made by him. He also said that he never had sex with that woman, then after the appearance of the dress stained with the Presidential DNA he redefined what “have sex” means. He was twice elected President of the United States.

Cain says he never did anything of the kind, specifically that he hasn’t acted inappropriately with anyone, not fifteen years ago and not since. His defense is innocence. That is hard to prove – how can you prove that you did not do something when the charge is ambiguous, and the specification nebulous? But the Bialek case is specific, and by its nature there is no possibility of witnesses or evidence. She says he did it, he says it did not happen. It all happened 14 years ago. No charges were made, no suits were filed, Cain did not get her a job. Cain has gone for broke here: this isn’t a case of misinterpretation. One of them is flat lying.

The President of the United States was impeached, not for inappropriate sexual advances, but for lying. Interestingly enough, it is not easy to find a copy of the formal Articles of Impeachment that were passed by the House and sent to the Senate; they involved perjury under oath. But then Martha Stewart has been convicted of perjury not under oath for denying to a federal investigator an act that was not itself a crime, so things are fairly murky there – my point being that it will be easy for the Administration and the media to keep this matter alive. Next step might be to have a Federal Elections Commission inspector ask Cain, possibly in a public place; that would allow them to bring charges against him if he continues the denial and the accusations continue. No conviction is needed, and indeed the matter need not come to trial: it’s unlikely that any major party will nominate a candidate for President who is out on bail.

Are the Obama supporters that afraid of Cain? Would they go that far?

A few years ago I would have said that was too farfetched to be credible even in a science fiction story. Now I have to ask. And I don’t know.

The purpose of all this is to eliminate Cain as a candidate.

Newt will be next. Then anyone else who isn’t Romney. The attack machine will be silent on Romney until he is the nominee. Then it will begin again, but it will be a different attack.

If all this reminds us of the end of the Republic in Rome, with Pompey and Cicero and Caesar and Clodius crashing a females-only party, and the street gangs burning public buildings, and mercenaries hired as candidate bodyguards, and the unemployed veterans demonstrations and — Well, it won’t remind many, because our schools no longer teach anything about that. I wonder what the Legions think of Cain?

Odd stories at links that may interest you, but I didn’t feel like writing about.

Google Beer:

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/10/07/google_launches_own_brand_of_beer/ 

Climate change story continues

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html

AP Exclusive: Cain Accuser Complained in Next Job

http://www2.wsls.com/news/2011/nov/09/ap-exclusive-cain-accuser-complained-in-next-job-ar-1447447/

Internet Legends

http://rjwhite.tumblr.com/post/472668874/fact-checking

Why U.S. military in Uganda? Soros fingerprints all over it

Obama’s billionaire friend has interests in African country’s oil

Read more: Why U.S. military in Uganda? Soros fingerprints all over it http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=356321#ixzz1dFMpUCRo

I have no idea why we are in Uganda, or whether we are doing any good there. I have a couple of sources, but no new information.

Students’ weakness in maths leaves academics counting the cost

     This is a story of some importance, but it belongs as part of a longer essay I am still working on.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=417361&c=1